


Limbo

by halogen



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: F/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-02
Updated: 2020-01-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:41:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22078627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halogen/pseuds/halogen
Summary: gammaxocxhayato, future arc. Satou's father, Shamal, has gone missing amidst a war, which puts a strain on her marriage with Hayato.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this was supposed to be a spinoff of something i used to write on ffnet. i started and never finished. i might not, but it'd be nice. also this will be sad.

When a person goes missing, there’s a limbo that takes their place.

It’s a limbo of wounds and reprieve, life and death, where the only comfort is a routine that might bring liberation. Liberation presents itself as an intangible idea, like truth or justice, and the routine comes from persistence. Not a singular persistence, but a persistence in all things, in offers of condolences, in the assertion that everything is fine, in minor inconveniences that rip like a needle at the seams. Each day undoes a stitch, one by one, until a hole forms. It’s a gaping hole, a void inside a body, but nothing falls out. It’s empty inside, and the days persist. The routine sticks.

Each morning is the same, in front of a news stand, separating copper and nickel euros or yen in a shaky palm, the hope that today might be the day that sways one way or the other. What’s left of a sleepless night drowns in the newspaper’s obituaries, pining for ideas over daily trips to the local coroner, hospital, and jail. Even the daily cup of stale coffee tastes the same. But there’s nothing, and the tension builds, fills a space that was previously uncharted yet still familiar. The coffee doesn’t help. The day digs into places it’s not welcome.

It’s six months of hands wringing together, fingers interlocked, the first time in a lifetime that prayer is an option. It’s hanging like a fog near the kitchen in case the front door cracks. It’s a web of air, teeth clenching, throat tightening, lungs tearing for a single weight lifted. It’s a sick rot, a spoiling fruit, a poisoned stench that can’t be washed clean. It’s a stale heart, a life washed of color, a cavity splitting the body apart from the inside out. It’s a limbo.

\--

She twisted her glass deeper into the coaster worn so thin only half the lettering remained. The ice in her amaretto and orange juice melted faster than she could drink it. Her glass cried down onto the chipping wood of the bar, and that fact, that her father had been missing for six months, branded her with a failure so hot, so searing even a drink couldn’t quiet it, made her want to cry, too.

A dim bar named just “Sette,” lit only by a string of bright green lights that turned the yellow of her drink lime. The jukebox drowned her out, almost taking the man next to her with it. He had dark roots and bleached hair with a body full of black ink, complaining to his bald, equally inked friend about a co-worker drunkenly operating a forklift that dropped a barrel of seabass into the Tyrrhenian sea. That was Napoli, a fool’s paradise, and she swallowed her diluted drink in honor of a practiced drunk.

The bar sat in the thick of Rione Sanita, a place that any halfway decent travel guide could tell you to avoid when visiting Napoli. Damned when King Charles III decided to build a palace atop a hill, Joseph Napoleon was forced to construct a bridge that isolated the city in its wake, the Ponte della Sanità. She had spent four months touring the vastness of Italy, some of Europe, limited to only the places she knew he liked best. There was nothing, and a part of her was wasting away with him. She arrived in Napoli that morning, decided that Rione Sanita and its irony, divided by a bridge, fit her best.

And even though the town was definitely the kind of place a person could disappear into, crammed between organized crime and desperate blue collar workers, all of Napoli wasn’t that far behind it, shadows and secrets, violence and hushed cries beneath a gleaming image. Decorated with cathedrals and saints, only pitted black like a peach. “Vedi Napoli e poi Muori.” That nothing could ever be more beautiful, to live past seeing Napoli would be a crime, they thought.

See Napoli and then die. She’d done the first part well enough. 

“Can I buy you a drink?” a man was at her side.

She met his eyes, flushed under the weight of them, twisted and twisted her glass until the tears dried up on the coaster. Her hand clenched tight, a shock from the past, a scolding from beyond. Out of normal, to be free from the cycle of six months, to know a single thing that was new before she knew nothing at all, she swallowed what was left of her drink, seeds and all, and said, “Go ahead.”

“Well, what would you like, miss -- ?” 

He looked like a yuppie, every one of his golden hairs pulled back, molded into place with a taste that matched the close shave on his angular jaw. She could smell the fresh starch in his suit, the dab of sandalwood cologne on his wrists. Only locals came to this part of town, a run-down poverty hole with broken streets and tight, dirty alleys. A rat had more business being here than a model citizen in an oxford suit, this middle-aged, stock-counting, excel-spreadsheet money man. But his Italian was thick, a tone of the Mediterranean that encompassed them, different than her poor, accent-ridden pronunciations. 

A part of her wondered if he could see it, the branding of her failure. “What do you think I want? Satou.”

She was sure she seemed like a bubbly prospect, rolling the punctured cherry around on its toothpick, sharp joints that seemed too big for her skin. “Geez, more yakitori, before the shinigami mistake you for dead!” her father would say when he gripped her thin cheeks, big dark eyes made bigger by her sinking skin. When she looked in the mirror, all she saw was a ghost, just a figure clinging to life for one more day.

“Ah, Satou- _chan_.” Maybe her name had felt like cotton candy in his mouth, a quick mouthful and then nothing but sugar specks, because her tone was not enough to deter him. “You seem like the kind of woman that doesn’t know what she wants.”

“Really, what gave it away?” 

A jest of Japanese, to sour whatever sweet was left on his tongue.

He leaned in, spoke in a hushed tone that she could barely make out above the music, “Nice wedding ring.”

His willingness to shame her in her native tongue worked, and she moved the emerald sitting on her bony finger under the cover of the counter. She adjusted it with her other hand, aligned the gem to the top of her finger. There was a flash of image, green splattering on the cobblestone like an egg, shell cracked and oozing a hidden life from beneath.  
The bartender stopped in front of her. A frayed rag cycled from the top of his shoulder to the counter, back and forth, cleaning after the drunks of spoiled Napoli. “What’s it gonna be, miss?” he asked. 

Satou turned to her benefactor, a look that matched the question, and he ordered two shots of tequila for them both. Her stomach deflated, another stab of pain in a familiar place, so familiar she was almost numb to the feeling. Tequila was her father’s favorite; she wondered if he was drinking it now, on a pedal boat outside of Capri, a beach on Lipari, safe in the Ponza grottos, so safe from danger that even she, a lady that knew every street in Italy down the cobblestone, would never find him. She shared this fact, and they toasted to him.

The taste was sharp, expensive and different than she was used to. She was used to her father’s bottom shelf, the same tequila he gave her on her wedding day to calm her, three shots back to back. The off-white flats she wore matched her dress and kept her from towering over sweet Hayato, but she drunkenly tripped on them as she made her way down the aisle, into the path of a diplomat. Her father had gripped her hand tight to keep her on her feet, the way that he had gripped her hand and pulled her off the streets of Fukuoka. He was more a savior than a father, so humble that he settled for parenthood.

He laughed at her sour face and watched her slam the glass onto the counter, a line of liquid landing on the curve of her hand. He was drawn to the glint, then up her arm to her face, her glossy bronze eyes, drunk already. “Apple fell far from that tree, huh?”

“Right, right.” She nodded. “Adopted dad, that’s why.”

The inked duo squirmed their way to the pool tables once he stole a chair from beside them. He propped his arm on the counter, and she watched his lips, closely, when he said, “Here we go. Love a good bar story.”

A line of sweat formed on the back of her neck, and the door behind her opened to push in a gust of wind that cooled her. She pursed her lips, threw him a small laugh. “That’s what did it? Being adopted?”

“Oh, maybe those pretty eyes of yours had something to do with it.” He could charm a snake with only words. The bartender was back, swiping his rag across the counter, asking if they wanted another round. They got two more amarettos with orange juice, and the drink washed the taste of tequila.

“No story here. What about you, lawyer?” Her edged, burgundy nail scanned him from chest to blonde hair and then back down again.

He was next to laugh, then waited for the song on the jukebox to end its chorus before saying, “I’m an accountant.”

An accountant in Rione Sanita. She had spent the night struggling not to cry, and now found herself, a bit, struggling not to laugh. “What, for the docks?” She scanned the tip of her index finger around the rim of the glass.

“Something like that.”

She looked down at his knuckles, saw they were as worn as her hard-working husband’s, maybe from the football she pinned him for. Then she was back at his face, picking away at every feature piece by piece to make sense of what was happening. Almond milk eyes, with brown irises melting into the white, the name she would call him in her memory. She was staring, and he continued, “What, am I cute?”

Satou shifted her eyes back to her hands and bobbed the cherry in the light that flashed off her drink. “Something like that,” she responded.

He glanced across the room, to the side of the bar that held two pool tables. One was unoccupied, the other with a scraggly group of four playing doubles. “Hey, wanna play a round?”

When he suggested they play pool, she thought about the Sanità Bridge, watching all the blinking lights from the east-facing traffic, counting each crack in the cobblestone, how the silk on her black dress would look against the wind. A part of her wanted to be thought of as good-natured, to be remembered as the kind of person her father had wanted her to be. All her life, she had documented the ways in which they were alike, flighty and full of anger, and all her life, he persisted on their differences, that she grow up to be a housewife that bore normalcy. 

She wanted to be that person, to someone, and agreed, held her drink close all the way to the pool table. The condensation wet her hand, made the experience real when he threw two sticks down on the green baize, a reprieve from the hectic hum of voices. He lifted the rack in a way that was surprisingly delicate for his big hands, turned to her and asked, “Ladies first?”

“Oh, this part is so boorish. You don’t mind doing it for us, do you?” A gentle but unpracticed tongue.

“It’d be my honor.”

He broke the set, colors scattering to every edge of the table, and she imagined how it must feel to split apart in a field of green. A crack. A bump, all the way into the hole with a skill she couldn’t match. He cleared the table of stripes before she could sink four solids. An accountant in Rione Sanita that could play pool. She finished her amaretto between rounds, between sarcastic snips and well-timed inquires, between lips finally curving into a smile.

He was at her side. “Guess I owe you a drink.”

“I actually have to go,” she said.

He laughed, grinded the blue chalk into the stick without thinking about it, like a nervous tic. “Your bedtime already?”

“Think I have a flight soon. Sorry, I never got your name.”

“Everyone calls me Gamma. You can, too.”

It was close to midnight, warm and so humid her thighs were sticking together from the sweat of the bar. It took her ten minutes to find a taxi, between failed hails and cabbies desperate to overcharge a woman that looked like a foreigner. In the taxi, she watched the blur of the city through the window. They passed under the Sanita bridge, and she squeezed her eyes shut as if to wish away the idea of it.

The airport was empty so late at night, families stuck on international layovers, tourists napping on luggage between missed flights. She stuck out like a sore thumb in her short dress and heels, the opposite of airport comfort, but each concerned face sucked her out of her misery. There was no hope, but they were all hopeless together, and that was something if not nothing.

“No carry-ons?” they asked, once when she bought her ticket and again as she made her way through security.

“Just a purse,” she responded each time.

Passing terminals, the chill of the conditioned space on her legs, she saw a man asleep with his feet crossed. His hair was peppered, along with his face, a week without shaving, and he could have been her father, if his nose was a bit bigger. She took the time to sit across from him, watch him snap awake each time his head fell too far down his shoulder. The memory of her papa doing the same each night on the couch, in his own world, drinking to escape something she could never comprehend.

A different day, the words now burning through her skin. Satou sat at the airport bar, ordered tequila with soda. No ice this time, so she could see her reflection clear in the shine. His likeness static in the glass, nowhere in her. Still, there, a possibility. Her skull would shatter on the cobblestone a different day.


	2. Chapter 2

He was asleep, her gentle husband curled into himself on the other side of the bed. Satou had woken up hours ago, spent most of that time running her finger along the peeling bed frame, wood splitting apart even faster than it had when she was just a kid. She remembered comparing the wood to the pillars at the temples in Fukuoka, pinching, hungry stomach keeping her eyes open at night to watch the old wood split. And then later, at ten, finding that the bed frame was more like the park benches in Tokyo, the first place she ran away to that wasn’t Fukuoka, the cold mahogany benches and the thrill of the trip washing her deep into the night.

The light hit only his side of the bed, and she reached out to feel the way the sun bleached the bed sheets even whiter, the way it had bleached Hayato’s hair a shade lighter when they were young. She moved her hand to the patch of light on his back, wondered if something that good could be shared, if only just a little. The heat warmed her fingers as she felt his skin stretch against her when he breathed. Then he shook, violently, his first smoker’s cough of the morning, rattling phlegm and the mattress.

He managed to sputter a good morning and an apology between raspy hacks and coughs. The light of the morning brought her chaos, the siphoning reality of who she was, and he brought her nausea when he leaned in to kiss her. Guilt as a sickness, a sense of self lost someplace six months ago, nothing to give in return. The sun fell off him when he stood up to find his pants, to pull out his box of cigarettes.

He was quick to light one, and the smoke covered the smell of old books and tequila, made her tongue writhe behind her teeth. “Can you do that outside?” she asked. 

“Of course, Sa-chan. I’m sorry.”

He put on his pants, and she ripped a hangnail of wood off the bed post. She tore a smaller piece off while he left the room, continued even when she heard the back door open and close. The points jabbed at her shaking hands, peeling her skin as much as she peeled the wood. Smaller and smaller pieces, setting each one on the nightstand until only fragments remained.

She thought of him outside, glowing in the fade of fog like an angel. He had always been so beautiful, lean from replacing meals with smoke, from losing breakfast to the middle of the day. A part of her wished that she had taken a different path in life, one that led her to arts, so that she might paint him, let the world see what she saw in him. Or another path, one that carried her away from him, to be anywhere but here, to feel anything but this. So he didn’t have to suffer her.

Hayato came back as she set the last piece of wood on the nightstand, even their habits aligned, to ask if she wanted to go out for breakfast. 

“I have to change my clothes,” she said.

“Of course, Sa-chan.”

\---

The diner was a faded blue, a queasy color that made her feel lost at sea without raft, waves crashing down on her from every corner. They came here often, because Hayato liked that they opened the windows to let him smoke inside. The atmosphere was suffocating, but there was a part of her that felt reprieve from the bright white window frames, the view of Namimori streets from beyond. The hum of traffic calmed her while she spooned a piece of cheesecake into her mouth.

Satou swiped the crumbs from the corner of her lips and turned the page of the newspaper. There was a stray spray of black ink on the corner of the bottom, and she rubbed her thumb over the imperfection to see how it felt. Just dry, with a scratch, the same as the rest of the paper. She turned the page again and saw Hayato’s emerald eyes digging into her. He was sipping his hot chocolate with an empty expression.

His fingers tapped against the table, one bouncing before the other like a cabaret performance. A cigarette would find him soon. His knuckles were roughed red, a look that was accustomed to him.

Satou had lived the life of a rat, seen children turn cold under the etchings of a cardboard box, but she had never seen a child defy death the way he did, wearing his pain against his will, the boy with the purple face. She often said that he was made to be Tsuna’s consigliere, protective, understanding, molded in the fire to be his hammer. But that’s what he was to them, often, a tool that they wore too thin.

“What’re you doing today?” he asked.

“Nothing today, but I have to fly to Czechia tomorrow to meet up with Chrome.” She looked up at him. “If that’s okay.”

“She’s been in Czechia for a while, hasn’t she?”

“Hm. Yeah,” Satou said from behind her mouth full of pudding.

“I’m just asking because we're meeting up with the Varia tomorrow. Juudaime and I are pooling information with them.”

“Hm, yeah, same. Mukuro’s onto something about there being two separate groups, like from different families.”

“Do you think you could go a day later?”  Both of his elbows fell next to his mug. He put his cheek in his palm, anything to fill his fingers.

“Why’s that?”

“It’s stupid, but that bitch, Kyouya, keeps bringing it up in our meetings, about how you’re always abroad.”

Her hands were in her lap hidden beneath the table. The words felt like they might fall out of her mouth and onto the table, a spectacle of her insides that would make him turn away from her. She picked the paint off her nails, a wonder to be him, how it felt to wear the way he suffered. If her insides could bleed to the surface, there would be a chance of understanding. “My father is missing.”

“I know. That’s what I tell them. You know Juudaime doesn’t care, but if you came to one, it would shut him up, at least.” He set the box of cigarettes on the table and fingered one out of the box. He held it without lighting it, but searched his pockets for his lighter.

“You’re embarrassed?”

“No, no, no.” He reached across the table to beg for her hand, which she gave with a sour taste in her mouth. “I just… don’t want you to forget about the rest of your family, that’s all.”

The cigarette sat jutting out from their embrace. She stared into it the way she had the black ink and said, “Takeshi’s dad, my dad, you don’t think Tsuna’s will be next?”

Then her hand was empty. Hayato found his lighter in his shirt’s pocket and stroked a flame. She could smell the tobacco from across the booth, the stink of sickness smothering her. Smoke swam out of the window and into the streets of Namimori. A pile of red paint chips lay on her bare thighs, nails now void of color. Nothing felt safe. 

He dipped the ashes into the clear glass tray. “Let’s just forget about it for now.” A huff. “Find anything in Napoli?”

Her eyes focused on the bright red against pale skin, mind away in a field of green while she held two almonds, one in each hand, up to the clouds. The smell of sandalwood, a clear breath with a clear conscience, a woman and not a pest. Then she looked up to him, felt her skin burn but sipped her black coffee until she could see the shine of his face. “Uh, no… Nothing.”


	3. Chapter 3

Satou dipped her straw deep into her frappuccino. She withdrew it to suck the whipcream off the end. A bit stuck to the edge of her lips, and she wiped it clean and spoke with puckered lips, “I met someone.” The chatter of the cafe sucked away her comment, shushed her so that her words fit only in the space between the two of them.

“From the…?”

“Oh, no, no. Just a guy in a bar. In Napoli.” Satou had nervously pinched all of the crust off her cinnamon bread, a pile of it stacked on her ceramic plate and a pack of mushy remnants lodged under her fingernails.

“Did he know anything about Shamal-san?”

“Uh, no. He was just cute, is all I meant.” Satou could only stare at her misspelled name on the cup. Saying it that way made her feel like she was in boarding school again, telling Nagi about the class clown in her homeroom. 

“Onee-chan…” Nagi’s only eye bounced around for answers, from Satou’s face to the floor, to the table to Satou’s wedding ring.

Now she was pulling each raisin out with the sharp of her nail, forging bare necessities. There was a certain stench to the coffee store, a mix of mildew, cardboard, and sweat. It was on the outskirts of Prague, away from the tourists and deeper into the questionable parts of the city. Satou felt the stench sticking to the back of her throat, decided to throw a piece of cinnamon bread in her mouth to quiet it.

“It’s nothing. I only got his name. Don’t mention it to Mukuro-san, please.” Satou saw Nagi’s throat clench, a deep swallow of shame.

They spent the morning pouring over Millefiore. Descriptions, locations and movements, photos to be burned moments after their departure. At the end of it all, Satou hugged her childhood friend goodbye, kissed her on both cheeks, and caught a taxi to the train station.

It was a relatively short train ride from Prague to Napoli. She would reach the city before dawn, giving her enough time to settle into her hotel room and canvas a separate part of town. Napoli was the last location Shamal had contacted her from. Forehead against the glass window of the train, she looped the last phone conversation in her head, hoping that it would follow her into sleep, that she might speak to him one more time, for him to exist inside a moment, even if that moment existed outside of him.

But the train unit consisted of a group of girls giggling in Czech, and sleep evaded her. In Napoli, the smell of life engulfed her: baking bread, the carbon monoxide accompanying the traffic, each and every person that passed by. Satou checked into her hotel and made her way to her small room. The humidity of the ocean town forced her straightened hair back into curls. She took the time to shower and change.

From beneath the weight of her suitcase, she pulled out a pair of black boots. Her fingers scanned over the golden tridents forged into the ankles. Shamal had gifted them to her for her twenty-second birthday. “Someday you’ll have to take over for me,” he had told her between slurred hiccups. She had worn into the shoes, but not the name. Not until she had a body, something to prove he wasn’t in hiding from the Millefiore, that he wasn’t deep in a flirtatious stupor, bound to return at his own leisure.

Her boots clicked against the sidewalk. She stopped by a coffee store, to prepare for a long night of interviewing bartenders, turning down drunk men, and arguing with what little sense lasted of those who lived in dark alleys. In the line, she turned a bottle of pain reliever over into her palm and sorted out two pills to take once her black coffee came.

Then, a hand on her shoulder, that startled her so abruptly that both pills hit the floor next to her feet.

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” a familiar voice that was following her to the floor to retrieve them.

Satou scooped them back into her palm, straightened the length of her legs again, to see two almond milk eyes staring into her eyes. “Oh, it’s you.”

“Hi, sorry, I was on my way home, and I noticed you through the window.” Satou was stuck staring at his perfect teeth, the curve of his bottom lip. “God, that makes me sound like a creep. Sorry, I just…”

“Gamma,” she said.

“Right. Oh…” He motioned behind her, that the line had moved in the midst of their commotion.

“Satou,” she said.

“Yes, sugar, I remember.” He laughed, cheery dark eyes calming compared to his large stature towering over her.

“These are just pain relievers. I’m not…”

Another laugh. “To each his own. I’m not judging, just here to hold up my end of the bargain.”

“The bargain?”

“I still owe you a drink, though this isn’t originally the kind of drink I had in mind.”

“Oh, right.” Satou turned towards the person in front of her, then back to Gamma. “Uh, I’m sort of in the middle of something right now.”

“Oh, I--”

“But I’m glad to see you!”

“Right.” His hands were now in his pockets, eyes back at the streets, a familiar look of a planned escape.

Satou sucked on her bottom lip, felt her cheeks flush hot. “Maybe later, then? The kind of drink you originally had in mind?”

A tug of a smile. “I’d like that.”

Between each bar, cafe, hotel, sip of coffee, she thought of him more than she thought of Shamal. Back at her hotel room, she sat the picture of her father on the nightstand with her own tugged smile. She set her trident boots by the same nightstand to replace them with a pair of heels. In the mirror, Satou straightened her hair to the length of the black strap to her silk dress. She softened her features with what little cosmetic skill she had before flashing her teeth at her own reflection, followed by a frown.

Guilt followed her all the way to the club. Inside was dark, with only patterned lights to illuminate the shape of their faces. There was a disco ball circulating at the center of the ceiling, and the music was so loud Satou felt her muscles vibrate along with it. It smelled like sweat, vomit, and alcohol. Chaotic, yet mystifying. 

“Sugar!” His screams were drowned out by the music, but she could make out his voice. The flashing lights shifted what she could see of his face with each second. She nodded, and softly touched his arm while he guided her to the bar.

When he returned with her drink, she had to hold it above her shoulders to keep it from spilling as people bumped into her. He set his hand on her upper back and gave her a gentle push back towards the dancefloor. The cup was already at her mouth, the elixir to her pounding heart. She was stepping into the territory of things she could not tell Hayato without repercussion. She wondered what Shamal would do, and then swallowed near half the cup in one go.

The music and his presence made her feel elated. He started to dance, and she couldn’t help but follow his lead. She was already dizzy from the alcohol when she felt his hip graze against hers. Her face was burning under the darkness. His hand took hold of her only empty one to lift it above her head, and then his other hand was on her waist. Dizzy and nauseous, she felt trapped in her decision, caught in her own snare. Was this who she was?

Everyone around her seemed like a blur. Alcohol had a habit of dulling her senses, but here she was, caught in him. The world felt like chaos, and she wanted to pull him in and ask him how he did it. How he made it seem so easy. Her muscles ached from the train. She could almost feel the music inside them, like she was as much a vibration as the sound.

The next thing she knew, he was pulling her by the hand towards an exit door. The cool night air hit their overheated bodies, and she breathed out a relief she didn’t even know she needed.

“So, gotten any better at pool?” he asked, leaning against the brick wall of the building.

They were in a relatively silent alleyway, with the sounds of traffic, the obscured night club music, and nearby chatter keeping them close. There was a group further down towards the road taking photos of themselves with the dumpster, and for a second, Satou missed being a teenager. “Found any humility?” she retorted. Her back fell against the wall next to him.

He shifted onto his arm to face her. “Where are you staying?”

She shared the name of the hotel that was just a couple of blocks away. He made a comment about her traveling on a budget and suggested a liquor store that was between the club and hotel. Satou nodded and followed after him. Inside the liquor store, she removed her wedding ring and slipped it into her purse while Gamma’s head was in the cooler. Her chest ached with a pain she had never experienced, and she decided to buy a can of beer that she drank on the rest of the walk to the hotel room.

By the time she fumbled into the room, her head felt as light as her hands. She was numb, in a different way than she usually was. “Love your hair,” Gamma commented from the doorframe.

Satou tried to feel at her hair, but her tingling hands could not paint a clear enough picture. She ran into the bathroom to see that her hair was starting to curl from the humidity of the club. “Ah, hang on, give me a minute.” She had the mind to be embarrassed even in her drunken state.

After fixing her hair with more product, she left the bathroom to find Gamma with the bottle of Hennessy in one hand and the photo of Shamal in the other. If she could have felt her heart, it would’ve been enough to make her nervous. She spluttered her practiced line, “Sorry. I lied a bit before. I’m a private investigator from Japan. Here to… Here to find him.”

“Looks familiar,” he said.

“Oh, really? You can take a picture of it, if you want. Let me know if you hear anything or know anyone. Would be a big help.” He extended the bottle to her, and she took it from him before taking a swig.

He fell into the chair near the writing desk. He unbuttoned his cuffs and asked, “Just realized I don’t know your last name, Satou-chan.”

“Kiraime,” she replied with the bottle still in her hand.

“That sounds nice.” His smile returned. “What does it mean?”

“I’m not sure,” she lied, image of Shamal flipping through a phonebook blindly.

There was a pause where she brought the bottle to her lips again. After a sip, she passed it to him. “Are you nervous?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

Her arm was extended out to hand him the bottle. “Hey, c’mere.” Gamma gripped her by the wrist and pulled her into his lap. She was frozen, and he tilted her wrist back so that he could drink from the bottle still attached to her. “One more. There you go…” Satou found him tilting the bottle to her own lips this time.

“My turn to ask a question. How old are you?” she asked as he stored the topless bottle on the desk.

He situated her with his arm around her, answering, “Oh, I was probably driving when you were in junior high.” His fingers were scanning along her upper arm to her shoulder, back down, and then up again to the strap of her dress.

All that found her drunken mind was Takeshi explaining pool to her at Haru’s graduation after-party. _Six bases. Homerun._ She craned her neck to meet Gamma’s lips, found his eyes searching for her. Satou had never felt more alive, more purposeful, than seeing the way he looked at her then. She felt like an ultimate truth, like all of humanity had been searching for her. _Homerun._

“Sugar,” he whispered.

As much as guilt sat at the back of her mouth, it could not stop her from kissing him. She found a foreign feeling in the action, one without Millefiore, Boxes, Rings, or death. Her heart turned, twisted, waned, each passing moment, a mixture of destruction and reparation. A transformation of pain, a comfort, to feel something rather than nothing.


	4. Chapter 4

Hayato’s piano sounded like heaven when she was drunk. After returning from Italy empty-handed but full-hearted, Satou took a train ride to Namimori at Hayato’s insistence. It was early morning and only her second time in the base, its unlived atmosphere as unwelcoming as their apartment. It all felt the same to her: the base, hotels, and their apartment. In a way, it reminded her of her childhood, constantly hopping from country to country with Shamal.

She brought the metallic flask to her lips, the whisky from minutes before still on her breath. They were tucked away in Hayato’s study, waiting for Bianchi to finish breakfast. While his fingers played a tune she barely recognized, her fingers scanned the surface of the emerald gem on her Mist ring. It was still as dormant as it had ever been. All of this, and she was just as lost, if not more.

He broke the long held silence after finishing his song, “Recognize it?”

“Chopin, huh? You played it at our wedding?” Her green eyes were glossy, but she could see him smile at her answer.

“I didn’t play this, but yeah, I did play Chopin that day.” It was a guess. He loved Chopin, that much she could remember. “Everyone is moving into the base, so Bianchi had it shipped over from the mansion. Do you wanna try it?”

“Ah, you know I’m no good at that kind of stuff.” The flask was back at her lips. She could see that his face was pained, but even now, meeting his gaze felt like sin. She could only watch his mouth, try to make logic of her impaired senses.

“Is everything okay?” he asked, sheepish and spineless.

“Sorry, just jetlagged. You know how it is. Nothing on Shamal. It’s just…”

“I know, sorry. I don’t mean to…”

Ryohei entered the study to let them know that breakfast was ready. Satou stuffed her flask away in her blazer’s inner pocket, right next to her hairbrush. Ryohei asked her about her recent trip to Czechia on their way to the kitchen. In her drunken state, she gave him slurred and concise answers. Hayato attempted to fill in the blanks for her. She was so far gone that even embarrassment evaded her.

The homemade food eased her sick stomach. Seeing everyone together in the kitchen gave her a foreign feeling of connectedness, and she wished that Nagi was there with them. Satou did not often gather with the others in this way. After the Ring Battles, she focused more on school, Nagi, Hayato, and the occasional job that the Vongola needed. Post-graduation, she spent a couple of years working missions with the CEDEF, where she met Lal Mirch. Any comradery with the Guardians was experienced through supporting Hayato.

They made their way to the conference room after breakfast. The warmth of the meal sobered her up a bit, and she began to feel grimy in her unwashed clothes. Sitting in front of the black screen of the computer, she saw her hair completely curled in the reflection. In a way, she felt disconnected from her own image. She could hardly recognize herself, even in her most natural state. She reached for her flask to drown the confusion.

Satou tried her best to focus on Tsuna’s voice, but found herself lost among them. Her mind was juggling visions of Gamma carrying her from the hotel bed to the writing desk, then from the desk to the armoire, his tongue on her neck, his foggy grey eyes smiling down at her in the morning, even the text message she received upon arriving to Namimori. Gamma wanted to see her again, and her heart was soft for him.

“What are you smiling about?” Lal’s harsh voice cut through the lull of the room.

Satou noticed that it was directed at her. “Thinking about you, senpai.” Satou winked.

“Do you think you’re fucking funny?” This was the way it had always been with Lal. The older woman was the definition of spite, the exact kind of person Satou would have been had Shamal not rescued her. Her attitude only got worse after Colonello’s death. The two women had more in common with each other than the whole of Vongola combined.

“Leave her alone, Lal,” Hayato called.

Kyouya made a comment about her being a skittish insect from the edge of the room. Lal continued, “Exactly. We’re at war. We need a fighter, not a goddamn comedian.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Satou spoke up. She swallowed the last of her whisky, and the room was silent. Lal could scold her until the end of time, but the truth was that Colonello had a headstone, something to mourn.

“Guys, please! Let’s just stay focused,” Tsuna begged.

There was agreement from everyone but Lal and Kyouya, whose ill will could be felt from across the room. Satou returned to her drunken stupor. Her night with Gamma had ended with the two of them broken across the bed, dropped on the sheets almost as indiscriminately as her faults. Her hangover put a spin on the experience that felt unique, as if she were marking him with the moment. Something to always draw back to when she thought of him.

He made sure to get her phone number and left with his hair disheveled and his shirt halfway buttoned. She felt euphoric following his leave, back against the door with her thumb habitually spinning at an absent wedding ring. It was an indescribable happiness, to feel wanted in a new way that had nothing to do with who she actually was. She attributed his affections to a core value, a fact that she was worthy.

Tsuna finished the meeting by going over the information that he, Takeshi, and Hayato gathered from the Varia. Satou managed to share Mukuro’s findings on the Black and White families. Kyouya made a comment on her ‘after all’ usefulness. “Satou, if you can work on that, it’d be a great help!” Tsuna said. She was the first one out of the room, followed by Hayato and Lal.

“Are you going to tell him?” she called down the hallway.

Satou stopped to look back at her. “Tell who, what?” Hayato approached her side.

“Your husband, what you’ve done.”

The blonde turned around at this. “You’re being vague, senpai. I’m tired.” Hayato was stuck behind, caught between the two women.

“It’s all over your idiotic face. Tell him or I will.”

Satou was so far down the hallway that her husband had no choice but to follow after her. “What does she mean?” he asked.

“Hell if I know. She’s gone batshit ever since Colonello died.”

“Should I worry?”

Satou deflected, “Yeah. She might do something rash, raid them on a whim or… I dunno, I’ll talk to her later.”

“Well, I’m supposed to be training with the Juudaime today,” he said.

“Okay, yeah. I’ll probably be in either the kitchen or the bedroom when you’re done.”

He squeezed her hand. “See you, sugar.”

She felt disgusting, physically, mentally, and emotionally. All she wanted was a warm shower to wash her clean of her transgressions, but when she drunkenly fell into the door of their room, she found the bed. It should’ve been easy to fall asleep with her hands numb and her mind void of abstract thought. But there was something about the candle on the side table that kept her conscious. It was a rosy peach, a scent called “Fresh Cut Roses.” Kyoko had gifted it to them for their second wedding anniversary, from her and Tsuna.

Even unlit, the scent was drowning her. It was relaxing, the most relaxed she had felt for months. It coaxed her asleep, and she must’ve slept for hours. When she woke up, she was sober but feeling dehydrated. Without the alcohol to wash her, the extent of her filthiness hit her. She got up and headed straight for the communal bathroom across the hall. She avoided the mirrors on the way to the shower.

She heard the bathroom door open from above the sound of the running water. She drew back the curtain to find Hayato there, smiling at her. The blonde returned the gesture before hiding behind the curtain again. It slid open minutes later, after she had forgotten about him. He was naked, and he slid into the shower beside her.

“Is it okay?” he asked.

She nodded, in the middle of massaging shampoo into her hair. Hayato turned his back to her to wet his own hair. He was decorated with scars, each one a story that she had either pressed him for or been present to witness. Her finger scanned across a freshly raised cut. He jumped in response. “From the Storm Room. You know how it is,” he said as he turned around.

They switched spots under the stream. “Don’t die before the Millefiore can kill us.”

The washrag was in his hand now, running along his equally scarred chest. There were fresh wounds there, too. She thought him so beautiful, molded by a higher power specifically for her. He didn’t wince when the soap entered his cuts. He was so strong, this man that supported her even when she didn’t deserve it. “I’m not going anywhere that you don’t go first.”

Satou embraced him. It was one of the only times that he didn’t smell of cigarettes, and his fresh scent buried her deeper than any alcohol or candle ever could. She reached a place where she wept involuntarily. If he had asked her what was wrong, she would have drawn a blank. She cried for her own pitiful existence, that her name was Gokudera Satou and that this was her only life. If the shower had hidden her tears and if he had not noticed, she would never know. He only said, “You’ve still got soap in your hair, you idiot.”

His hands softly kneaded her hair under the water. He was skilled at dealing with her curly hair, knowing exactly how to navigate it without getting his fingers stuck. Her husband took a step forward that moved her deeper into the path of the water. It smothered her, so much that she could only close her eyes and wait for it to be over. She felt the washrag against her arm. The cloth was soft. With the warmth of the water accompanying it, her tears slowly began to subside. She removed herself from the stream, and then eventually from the shower.

She quickly dried off with a towel, using it first to dry her hair before wrapping it around her body. Her clothes were still packed away in her suitcases. She crossed the hallway to pick out a pair of pajamas. Hayato entered the room, the both of them still dressed in their towels. He had a smile on his face and a look in his eye that she hadn’t seen in a long time.

“What?” she asked with a suppressed giggle.

“You in that towel. Your hair like that.”

“What about it?” she asked again. She was fighting a smile.

“You know what,” he answered. 

“So you’re gonna be vague, too?” She threw the lid over the luggage before turning to him.

“Can I kiss you?”

Hayato was hovering near her, a hand daring to take hold of her arm. His fingers were bouncing, not for a cigarette, or for keys on a piano, but for her. Satou turned into him, and his arm was instantly around her. She had already poured herself down the shower drain; she wasn’t sure what more there was left to give him besides this.

They kissed soft at first, like the very first peck she had given him on the Namimoi bridge. She squeezed his left arm with one hand, another on his bare chest. Her lips connected with his four more times, one after the other, before she moved to his neck. She was busy trailing her lips down his neck to his chest when he pulled her towel away.

His right hand was in her hair, while his left hand scanned across her arm in rhythm. It felt foreign, the way he touched her, and her body reacted with both anticipation and disgust. She pushed his arm away, and his right hand moved to her cheek, pulling her lips into his. 

“Satou,” he whispered.

How she wished for a different name. Shamal had given her the burden of a joke and nothing else. Hearing Hayato say her name for the first time, the day after they kissed on the bridge, made her feel it was special in some way. She pressed him to say it at each chance she could get. Hayato was callous and the only soft words he ever spoke were in relation to her. That idea alone used to make her feel worthy, now it just reminded her of how flawed she truly was.

“My hair, huh?” she asked. Her eyes were glossy, perhaps even more than when she was drunk. She kissed him once more.

“Hm…” He giggled sweetly into her ear. “I was thinking about what kind of kids we’d have, curly silver hair… God, I’d feel so bad for them.”

“Yeah, kids, with all this going on.” She scoffed at the idea.

“Well, y’know, maybe after… It won’t last forever.”

“Right. If we manage to survive this, we’ll do what’s only logical. Have kids even though we hate them.” She laughed.

“I mean, we hate _other_ people’s kids.”

Her head bobbed anxiously. “Seems like the kind of thing people do to save their marriage. Have kids when they don’t want them.” She tried to laugh again, to deflect his tone.

“That’s what she meant, right, Lal? That something’s not right, with us…”

Satou could only rest her head against him. For the past nine years, Hayato had been her closest confidant. She wanted to tell him about Gamma, about how she felt, what she had been doing these past couple of days. She wanted to be honest with her best friend, but the thought of his sad eyes made her say, “Let’s talk about this when everything is over, okay? There’s just too much going on…”

His hand found hers, and he squeezed it. There was a silence that lasted near a minute. When he spoke, his voice cracked, “Whatever you’re doing, please be safe…” He pulled her onto the bed next to him.

Satou saw the cigarette in his hand and asked that he light the candle while he was at it. Then they lay there in a pattern that followed them a span of ten years. Both wanting to be elsewhere, away from the pain and discomfort. But when Satou hurt, this is where she fell, in the nook of his arm. And when Hayato hurt, this is where he went for peace, to a woman that understood the intentions of his heart.

The room was silent, but it screamed freshly cut roses.


End file.
